I Closed My Door

by Emilio Prados

translated by Jennifer Barber

I closed my door to the world,
my flesh, lost in sleep . . .
I stayed inside myself,
magical, invisible,
naked as a blind man.

Lit from within,
filled to the rims of my eyes.

Trembling, unseen,
I stayed there in the air
like pure water
in a clear glass,
transparent angel in a mirror.

 

Emilio Prados (b. 1899, d. 1962), from Málaga, Spain, belongs to the generation of ’27 that included Lorca, Vincente Aleixandre, Luis Cernuda, Pedro Salinas, Manuel Altolaguirre, and others. With Altolaguirre, Prados founded the literary magazine Litoral in 1926. Prados left Spain as a result of the Civil War, and spent the rest of his life in Mexico. His Poesías Completas, edited by Carlos Blanco Aguinaga and Antonio Carreira, was published by Visor Libros in Madrid in 1999.

Jennifer Barber’s recent poetry collection is Rigging the Wind (Kore Press, 2003). She is editor of the journal Salamander. (1/2005)